Never . . .
. . . Make Jokes with Your ME, It Has No Sense of Humour.
Ugggggh. It closed me down big time, today. So forgive me if you get more snowy Hampshire photos today too.*
Yes, I made it back to the cottage last night: that is, Wolfgang, hellhounds and I all arrived back together. We crunched up the hill and turned into our slot slick as snowshoes. I have been contemplating the irony of the fact that every day of Third House ownership till this last week has included use of a driveway–a nice flat driveway on a nice flat street–so that if for any reason I didn’t want Wolfgang at the cottage–and didn’t want to walk back from the mews–I could leave him at Third House. Until last Tuesday. When the monster builders’ skip arrived. The one that takes up the entire neighbourhood. It ought to have little warning flags dangling off its corners, like on super-long beams and girders sticking off the ends of flatbed trucks. I was up there today, checking out the frozen hellhound chicken** situation since fresh food deliveries in town are a little curtailed, and wondering if any of the plants in the porch are still alive, and observed that the skip is filling up in an appalling way. I look at the dust and shreds and scraps and think, that used to be most of the inside of my house. Couldn’t they have reused some of it?
We didn’t have as much more snow overnight as predicted, which is just as well, since I’ve been in no shape for further shovelling. But today we’ve had bands of rain, freezing rain, sleet, snow and hail serially galloping through like some kind of Keystone Kops routine, only without the cream pies. And there has been absolutely no sign of any more clearing or sanding: I saw exactly one tractor with a plough-like device arranged across its front, but the tractor was going hell for leather, as tractors go–which is quite hell for leathery enough in these conditions–and furthermore the plough thing was held aloft like the Olympic torch and not doing our streets any lick of good. With the result that the goulash underfoot is increasingly revolting.
There is sign of the baffled locals learning by necessity: cars creep past at 10 mph and the fishtailing at corners is muted. I may almost have been involved in a bumper car moment this evening: there is a one-lane railroad tunnel near here, and the person coming downhill has to give way to the person coming uphill. Furthermore the tunnel has a sharp bend in it, so as you’re coming downhill you don’t see what’s coming at you till rather late in the game (or for that matter coming uphill you’re risking that the person who should give way is going to give way: not a sure thing, I can tell you). Even preparatorily going 5 miles an hour, when headlights shone out from the tunnel and I stepped gently on the brake we swung out sideways with great dignity and deliberation, and then swung back again. Even knowing that the worst that’s going to happen is another gouge out of poor Wolfgang’s much-patched paintwork, I don’t like the sense of the ton*** of metal, plastic, rubber, and unknown environmentally unfriendly substances skating off on its own design without me. I am considering† a letter to our local council suggesting that the one-way gets turned around.†† 
And now, having tottered through a bare minimum of hellhound hurtles††† between cloudbursts of one thing or another I am preoccupied with getting back up the frelling hill at the cottage again tonight. Chains. I long for chains. You know, the kind that you put round the tyres on your car.
PS: I am, however, extremely glad to report that the tied-on green garden-rubbish bag is still in place. I will be a lot less glad however in a few more days of this weather when everything underneath it dies of lack of sunlight. Oh, gods, there is not room in the cottage to bring that whacking vast planter indoors. . . .
* * *
* I have Blogmom working on the Why They Won’t Click Bigger problem
** the chicken is frozen, not the hellhound
*** I’ve just been looking up car weights on the web. I didn’t think modern styrofoam and tin-foil cars weighed anything like this much. Barring diamond-encrusted SUVs.
† but not very hard
†† At least if we’re going to have more winters like this one. Ratbags and tiger pits but I do not want to remember how to cope with winter. It’s all been flooding back, the last two days. I like laughing my way through December and January at the green growing grass, and actual winter crops in the farmers’ fields. I like snowdrops in January and daffodils in February. I like being able to wear All Stars all year long without risk of frostbite.^
^ Although I admit I would love some waterproof walking shoes that actually fit, ie after I get them home from the shop
††† There’s some kind of Einsteinian equation about how much more they weigh, hitting the ends of their leads, in direct proportion to the uncertainty of the footing. So far however the only time I’ve fallen down was when I slid off the invisible edge of the path and subsided, rather gently really, into the embankment. Hellhounds rushed over to be taught the rules of this exciting new game. I won’t get down on the floor with them outdoors nearly often enough.
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